Abstract. One of the main political trends of 2021 in Ukraine was the consolidation of power by President V. Zelensky. Seeking to strengthen his position the Ukrainian leader has consistently weakened the influence of the opposition and the oligarchs on the political process. At the same time V. Zelensky decided to seize the initiative from the nationalist forces, increasingly promoting initiatives to «return»the territories of Crimea and Donbass to Ukraine. In 2021 the final turn of the Zelensky administration into a national-patriotic track took place. Zelensky appeared as a politician who was ready to «contain Russia», was fighting against Russian informational influence and so called «pro-Russian» parties and was consistently carrying out Ukrainization and de-Russification of all spheres of society. The situation around the Donbass is gradually turning into a full-fledged international crisis with potentially extremely destabilizing consequences for the entire international security system. The resolution of the conflict in the Donbass apparently can only become a part of a general reset of Moscow’s relations with the United States and NATO. However, the first V. Putin’s meetings with J. Biden demonstrated that the path of the parties to mutual understanding would be very long.